


ever dreamed we even could be

by bluenorth



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017 Combine, Cuddling, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 19:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11168523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluenorth/pseuds/bluenorth
Summary: All Nolan knows is that he likes Nico and that he is really fucking screwed.





	ever dreamed we even could be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stonesnuggler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonesnuggler/gifts).



> This is for R, who deserves only good things and since life hasn't gotten the memo yet, I'm taking matters into my own hands. ILY <333
> 
> Massive thanks to Mona for getting me into this ship and providing me with information and articles and pictures and awesome headcanons. You're probably getting one with lots of Kailer/Cody soon-ish.
> 
> This is only partially beta'ed, but as per usual, my dear Lor has done wonders for this fic!
> 
> Title taken from Sara Bareilles' _Cassiopeia_.

Excitement and nerves have been Nolan’s constant companions for the past couple of days. Sure, part of it is because they're at the Combine now, which means the Draft is only a couple of weeks away, this day he's been dreaming about since he was a kid, this thing he's been waiting for for what seems like an eternity.

The other part of it, though, has entirely too much to do with Nico’s gorgeous eyebrows and his princely haircut and his cute accent that sounds more like Swedish than German to Nolan’s ears, but he doesn’t know shit about accents, anyway.

All he knows is that he likes Nico and that he is really fucking screwed.

It’s ridiculous, is what it is. He barely knows Nico, has only met him a few times, hasn’t talked to him all that much because they never get the chance at these events. But Nico has the best smile Nolan has ever seen, he’s smart, he’s great at hockey and he seems to be a cool guy off the ice. That’s what Cody and Kailer say, at least, and Nolan trusts them. A little.

Still, those are not great reasons to be crushing on someone this hard. He’s sure he’s built Nico up in his head, what with how often people bring him up, never able to escape the thought of him even if Nolan wanted to. It’s all his imagination running wild and over-analyzing the looks Nico had shot him at the CHL awards, and the hug he had given Nolan that was a tad too long to be totally, well, bro.

Nico turns out to be so much better than Nolan convinced himself he was. He’s just incredibly nice, a lot of fun to be around, great at getting along with everyone, making them all feel like part of the group. He says smart things in his interviews, he talks to Nolan easily in between and when they finally have a minute to breathe, he nudges his shoulder against Nolan’s and smiles.

Okay. So maybe Nolan has a few reasons to be crushing on Nico.

“I thought they’d never stop asking me dumb questions about you,” Nolan says to stop that particular train of thought. “It’s like they want me to say that you suck or something.”

“Yeah, I get the questions about you as well. I really don’t care who goes first,” Nico says.

Nolan believes him and realizes he honestly doesn't care, either. Not with Nico. He’d probably be bothered if it was some other guy who got picked first overall, and it’s not like he wants Nico to get picked before him, but if he does, Nolan will be okay.

His head is swimming after a day of interviews and he's glad they're finally on their way to the hotel. It turns out that somehow (and Nolan would really like to know who is responsible for this), he and Nico are going to be roomies. He wonders if that is a thing they just do with the top two prospects, if McDavid had to share a room with Eichel.

Nolan doesn’t mind. How could he, when he has a chance to see Nico come out of the shower with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips, when he gets to talk to him late at night when they're both dead tired but too excited to sleep. They decide to ruin the media’s desperate attempts at pitting them against each other and once he’s told a few reporters that he thinks Nico’s a great guy, the stupid questions stop.

They hang out with Cody and Kailer a lot, and with all that going on, the Combine becomes more like a school trip he can enjoy with his buddies than this stressful thing that could determine the rest of his career. He pukes his guts out after the wingate test, but his nerves are mostly calm by the end of the Combine, outweighed by his excitement.

He still really likes Nico, though, which means he's also still really fucking screwed.

*

Nico’s leg is pressed up against his when they get into their seats on the plane. It’s warm, solid, and Nolan tries not to move at all.

“Want to watch a movie together?” Nico asks once they’re in the air, pointing to the selection of films he has pulled up on his flight entertainment screen.

“Sure. You can pick,” Nolan says, mostly because he’s curious to see what kind of movies Nico likes. His own taste is often all over the place, so he’ll probably be able to enjoy anything.

“Did you see this one?” Nico’s index finger hovers over a thumbnail of a Rogue One poster.

“Yeah, but I’d watch it again if you haven’t. It’s great.” Nolan has actually seen it twice, but that just means he can pay attention to how Nico reacts to the film.

“Okay, if you’re sure…”

Nolan nods and Nico’s suddenly leaning across the armrest between them. It takes Nolan a second to realize he’s just finding the movie on Nolan’s screen instead of waiting for him to do it himself. Nolan’s irrationally worried that Nico will break the body contact they’ve got going on when he leans back, but if anything, Nico’s leg seems to be lodged against his more firmly now.

They plug in their headphones and Nico counts down from three so they can press play simultaneously.

It’s a good thing Nolan has seen the movie already, since he needs half his brain capacity to keep himself from sliding his hand on Nico’s thigh, where his heart tells him it belongs.

*

“Are you tired?” Nico asks when they get to their hotel room in Nashville. It's not that late and for once, they don’t have to be up horribly early the next day.

“Nope, why? You got wild plans for tonight?”

“No, not wild. I’ll just call my family and then I thought we could watch more Star Wars? If you want?”

“Yeah,” Nolan says. He is more exhausted than tired and he has talked more in the last couple of days than he usually talks in a month. That’s what it feels like at least, so he’s glad to just watch a movie and not have a long conversation.

He sits on his bed and plays with his phone while Nolan talks to his parents, but it’s just a front. He’s listening to Nico, fascinated, as he speaks in German. The words pour out of his mouth at a much faster speed than when he speaks English and the sentences are longer, or Nolan thinks they are. He can’t really tell where words or sentences begin and end.

“That didn't really sound like German,” Nolan says when Nico has hung up.

“Yeah, it’s Swiss German actually. That’s different from what they speak in Germany.”

“But you understand Germans though, right?”

“I do, yeah. But they don’t always understand us,” he says with a grin.

Then, he plops down on the bed next to Nolan with his laptop and sends Nolan’s brain into overdrive. He forgets where he was going with his questions because he wasn’t expecting this, and Nico is suddenly so close, moving the second pillow up against the headboard so he can lean against it. His shoulder isn’t quite touching Nolan’s, and Nolan spends the entire time it takes Nico to find The Force Awakens thinking about that inch of space that’s still there.

Nico adjusts the laptop, places one side on his knee and the other on Nolan's.

“Can you see okay?”

Nolan feels a little brave, so he shifts down a bit and leans against Nico’s shoulder, pretending it’s so he can see the screen better, even though the angle was fine all along.

“Yeah, hit play.”

*

Nolan wakes up in the middle of the night, disoriented and slightly uncomfortable. The light on the nightstand is still burning and he’s in his day clothes. He’s cold, too, except for where Nico is pressed up against his left side, head resting on Nolan's chest, one arm slung over his stomach.

Nolan holds his breath for what seems like an eternity, his sleep-riddled brain trying to make sense of this. Somehow, all he can focus on is the way Nico’s eyelashes look against his light skin, fine and thin in contrast with his eyebrows.

He wouldn't move, but he’s still wearing his dress shoes and he really needs to go to the bathroom, so he tries to untangle himself as gently and quietly as possible. Nico stirs, but his eyes remain closed and Nolan tiptoes to the bathroom, where he takes a piss and stares at his reflection in the mirror while seconds and minutes tick by.

Nolan wants to crawl back into bed with Nico, fit their bodies together and pretend that that's normal. The thing he should do, probably, is sleep in the perfectly empty bed that's available for him.

He strips out if his clothes, thinks he should thank his mom for reminding him to pack enough suits and shirts because this one is far too wrinkled, and sneaks out of the bathroom. His pyjama is still in his suitcase and unpacking it now would mean risking to wake Nico, so he gets under the cold sheets of the vacant bed in his briefs.

He glances over at Nico who has curled in on himself in his sleep. He looks soft, his hair sticking up at odd angles, mouth slightly askew. Nolan has never wanted anything more than to run his hands through this hair, brush it aside and lean in to kiss those lips. Knowing that it won’t happen is a dull ache in his chest that he hopes will fade when there’s a little distance and busy schedules keeping them apart.

Nolan shifts to switch off the lights when he catches sight of Nico’s laptop, shut and carefully stowed away on the lower shelf of the nightstand.

He lies awake for a long time, trying not to think about the implications, and fails miserably.

*

Between doing more interviews, watching game 4 and meeting Sidney fucking Crosby, it’s been a bit of a day for them. Nolan has a hellishly early flight in the morning and he’s ready to crash when they get back to their room just after midnight.

Nico doesn’t seem tired at all, happily chatting away about everything, as if Nolan hadn't been right there to experience it, too.

They haven’t talked about what happened the night before. Nico had woken up in the morning and hadn't said a thing to indicate that it was in any way out of the ordinary for him to fall asleep on a teammate, quite possibly on purpose. Nolan has spent the day waiting for some kind of awkwardness from Nico, but there has been none.

Perhaps it is normal for teammates to do this and Nolan just hasn't gotten the memo about perfectly innocent impromptu cuddle sessions yet. But he and Nico aren’t teammates, and he has spent enough time sharing rooms with other players to be pretty sure that this is not a normal thing.

“Would you really want to play for Switzerland if you couldn't play for Canada?” Nico's question stops Nolan from dwelling on his thoughts. He’s been trying to make sense of it and it has yet to lead to a conclusion that is more plausible than the laughable idea that Nico might like him back.

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. Switzerland just seemed like a good option, not an answer he was likely to get into any trouble for.

“Why? I mean, aside from how I have told you that it’s awesome there.”

“I don’t know. I guess...you know, it’d be cool to play on a team with you.” Nolan has heard Kailer and Cody gush about how awesome Nico is as a teammate and they've only played with him for the top prospects game. Knowing how good Nico is, as a person and as a player, makes Nolan wish he could have that, just for a little while.

“Oh. Yeah, I’d like that as well, I think. It sucks that the same team can’t draft us both.”

“Yeah,” Nolan agrees. He shrugs out of his suit jacket and kicks off his shoes. When he turns around to walk over to the bed, he finds Nico in his path, looking at him with a strange intent in his eyes.

“What’s-”

Nico cuts him off. “Why did you switch beds in the middle of the night?”

Nolan gapes at him, suddenly incapable of remembering all the intelligent and non-incriminating comments he thought up for different variations of this conversation.

“I thought you were asleep,” is all he can manage, which isn’t exactly an answer.

Nico, who seems unfairly calm considering what he is asking Nolan to explain, raises one of his impressive eyebrows and says, “I was pretending. Wanted to see if you’d come back.”

“I didn't know you wanted me to.” Nolan’s cheeks are burning, worse than during any of his interviews, worse than during any of the Combine tests.

"Huh. Well, I did,” Nico says and steps into Nolan’s space, places his hands on Nolan's hips and smiles, bright and happy, as he leans in. Nolan tries to focus on Nico’s eyes and Nico’s lips, until his brain helpfully supplies that that's not what he’s supposed to be doing.

He closes his eyes just as their lips meet, slow and a little hesitant. Nolan's heart can barely stand this much, beating hard and fast against his chest. When Nico slides his hands under Nolan's shirt and around his back to pull him close, it's like someone has flipped the world upside down and all he knows is Nico’s lips and tongue.

Nolan finds that it’s easy, so easy, to pull Nico with him as he walks backwards to the bed, to lick into Nico’s mouth, to run his hands through Nico’s hair. It’s simple to get rid of their clothes, to leave kisses all over Nico’s body, to gasp Nico’s name and come in his hands.

It is infinitely more difficult to leave, a few hours later. They haven't slept, but Nico has been tucked against Nolan’s side for a while, pressing idle kisses to his collarbone.

“I need to go soon,” Nolan murmurs. Nico makes a noise low in his throat and moves to straddle him, kisses him until they're breathless again and Nolan's alarm goes off for the second time.

To his credit, Nico tries to be helpful when Nolan packs, hastily throwing things in his suitcase. He's running late regardless, but that doesn't stop him from pushing Nico up against a wall. He only stops when he really, absolutely needs to go if he doesn't want to miss his flight.

“I'll see you at the Draft,” Nico says.

“You'll see me on facetime before then,” Nolan promises and takes his suitcase, the memory of Nico’s smile, and another quick kiss with him.

 


End file.
